Following the closure of its traditional Chicago home, one of the most storied races on the international calendar has a new home in Virginia. Laura King was on hand for the most recent edition
Like it or not, Colonial Downs is the new home of the Arlington Million.
It does not have a beautiful, palatial white grandstand – but it does have a splendidly welcoming arrival drive, towering forests on either side of the highway, bright white fences signalling your visit to something equine. Early in the morning the mist rises from the turf track, geese swoop over it, and only hoofbeats and the cheery ‘good mornings’ of the riders punctuating the quiet.
Arlington Park, the Chicago home of the fabled Million from inception in 1981 as the first race to offer a million-dollar purse, had eight decades of history. Colonial Downs, Virginia’s only Thoroughbred track, has rather less.
The venue originally opened in 1997, but closed for racing in 2013, the casualty of a disagreement between the then management and horsemen's groups. Purchased by Churchill Downs Inc in 2022, it has been revitalised since, but still relies chiefly on its casino to bring in the punters.
But then there is also high-profile weekend in August, when the relocated Million – still called the Arlington Million – and its undercard staples, the Beverly D and Secretariat Stakes, roll into town.
Unfortunately, this year, a hurricane (downgraded to Tropical Storm Debby) also rolled into town, causing the track’s biggest day to be postponed by 24 hours and run on Sunday instead.
And even then, it started late, a satellite outage meaning a delay of more than an hour. This race, it seems, must always overcome some kind of adversity. The Chicago version of the Million at Arlington survived a fire that wrecked the grandstand in 1985 – the celebrated ‘Miracle Million’ won by British-trained Teleprompter in front of a temporary tented village.
What Arlington couldn’t survive, however, was an offer from Chicago Bears in 2022, and the famous grandstand was pulled down in 2023, before which Churchill Downs set about finding a new home for the race. After running it at the home of the Kentucky Derby in 2022, the Million was moved to Virginia in 2023.
Epic battle
Dave Zenner, who attended 31 Millions when it was run at Arlington, has moved with the race to its new base, as director of racing and simulcast operations for Colonial Downs, located in the rural environs of New Kent.
Zenner has fond memories of the first edition in 1981, that epic battle between John Henry (who won again in 1984), and, less happily, of the fire. “For me, the best Millions were all about the event and what surrounded it,” he says.
“It would have been a shame to see the race fall by the wayside, so credit to the team for keeping it alive through 2022 at Churchill and bringing it here where it looks to have a permanent home.”
A pioneering event on the international stage, the original Arlington Million was a clear precursor to the Breeders’ Cup. However, like so many other significant races, the Chicago contest eventually lost a good deal of its lustre following the advent of the two-day end-of-season championships.
Still, while the Colonial Downs version is plainly not what it was, the Million has retained its $1m purse and a trace of its international appeal.
What is more, there are a couple o
f European raiders among a field of six for the 2024 running, despite travel from overseas being less straightforward than it was in Chicago. Ancient Rome, trained by Lambourn-based Charlie Hills, had to spend two days in quarantine at Churchill Downs before an 11-hour van journey to Colonial.
“It’s starting to look a bit more like Arlington and the International Festival of racing of old,” continues Zenner. “Charlie Appleby’s horses have been Saratoga-based, but he’s come over to the States with the idea of running here. It’s races like this which makes it possible for them to come over.”
Tales of the turf
Colonial attracts European trainers for the same reason Arlington did: grass. Its turf course, named after the local hero Secretariat, is the widest in North America. It also holds the distinction of being burned each year, the track executive believing this nurtures the soil better than trimming, pushing the nutrients back in.
“I think it’s one of the best turf tracks in America,” says Irish expat Ben Curtis, who is leading the jockeys’ standings at the current meet. “It’s well maintained, and it rides very fair. It never seems to get cut up or overused and horses can win from the front and the back. It’s a bit of a crowd-pleaser in that you can run any kind of horse here and still win a race.”
Zenner adds: “New Kent is a very pastoral area of Virginia, and this is a place which was built around the turf course. We have a 180ft wide turf course and we keep a rail in between so we’ve always got two turf courses set up. On a typical nine- or ten-race card, it wouldn’t be unusual to have seven or eight races on the turf, which is very much the opposite of most American tracks.”
The meet could be described as ‘boutique’, hosting 27 days this year, starting in early July and ending on September 7.
“In Virginia, live racing dates are tied in with the gaming machines, so for every 100 gaming machines, that’s a live racing date,” explains Zenner of a model which may sound bizarre to Europeans. “As we move our way up with the Rosie’s Gaming Emporiums here and across the state and get more machines, to 5,000, that’s 50 racing dates.”
That extension is imminent, following an enthusiastic announcement made during racing by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. The Virginia Derby will now become a 50-point Kentucky Derby qualifying race and move to dirt.
“The Derby prep will move to the spring when the track will open for five or six days of racing,” explains John B Hannum III, executive director of the Virginia Equine Alliance. We will have the eyes of the nation on Colonial Downs in March and then we’ll reopen for our traditional meet in July.”
The future looks exciting, but what about Million day itself? The 12-race card takes place under sunny skies, with temperatures of around 30 degrees offset by a breeze.
Pleasant buzz
There’s a pleasant buzz around the track, where entry is free. Young families enjoy pony rides, sky diving, the Budweiser Clydesdales and a flyover, while shorts, t-shirts and baseball caps arede rigueur. Even Frankie Dettori makes an appearance, his first at the track, but goes winnerless for a change.
Inside the dark belly of the grandstand, it’s completely different. Hundreds of people of varying ages are locked to slot machines, seemingly oblivious to the finely-honed Thoroughbreds pounding the pristine turf just a few metres away. It’s a long way from the 1970s, when American racing’s most famous son was born and raised just a few miles away, at Meadow Farm, now the sprawling Meadow Event Park.
“Virginia was always known as a breeding state and the great Secretariat was born here,” says Hannum. “Prominent breeders such as Paul Mellon had their operations here; Mill Reef was a Virginia-bred.
“But it never had the legal capacity to have racing until about 30 years ago,” he explains. “When pari-mutual wagering was finally legislated, that allowed Colonial to be built. However, the dynamics of racing were changing a lot at that time and Virginia was a little behind the curveball right at the onset with their racing, so it was difficult to get things established.
“Now we have an alternative form of gambling in the HHR (Historical Horse Race) machines, which for all intents and purposes are slot machines. That money has enabled us to get Colonial Downs open again and now we have purses which are very competitive. Virginia now has a model similar to what other states in the mid-Atlantic region have, be it slots or some other form of gaming to help offset the cost of racing.”
He's not wrong: Million day and the two which follow put up more than $3m in purses and even claiming races are worth $28,000. Combine that with only needing to race three days a week and it’s a compelling place to be for jockeys, grooms and trainers.
Middle of nowhere
“It’s in the middle of nowhere, but half-an-hour one way is Richmond and half-an-hour the other is Williamsburg,” says Curtis. “It’s very chilled out and a short enough meet that you can try and get focussed and be here breezing horses every morning. It’s a lovely area, beautiful, and the people are great.”
Curtis’s efforts are rewarded on Million day by a stakes win in the Van Clief on Dream Shake. The cheer he gets is as loud as that for William Buick, who flies in to guide Appleby-trained Nations Pride to a smooth success in the 41st Arlington Million, beating Integration and fellow British raider Ancient Rome.
It’s the Godolphin representative’s fourth top-level win and it brings with it automatic entry to the Japan Cup. “Look, he was the best horse in the race and we knew that,” says Buick.
“I knew he was coming here in great form and he really impressed me – he's an exciting horse and he's won four Grade 1s now. The leader was getting a lot of rope and he was getting it cheap, so I just wanted to have everything covered as well as I could.”
Buick offers his views on Colonial Downs before dashing for the airport. “It's a beautiful turf course, this track is world-class,” says the British champion jockey. “The ground is beautiful and it’s a very fair track from what I could gather – and obviously there are some very big races here now.”
Similar comments come from Graham Motion, who’s exciting Trikari enhanced his CV further with an emphatic win in the G2 Secretariat Stakes.
Trust in the track
“I like Colonial and we’ve supported it right from the start,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons we wanted to run here, because I trust the track.”
Such comments are caviar to the Colonial team, who know their turf is their best feature “I’m looking forward to enhancing the stature of the Million by continuing to build up the undercard,” says Zenner.
“We’re running four other stakes races which would normally have been sprinkled throughout the season and, by themselves, they’d be OK, but if you put them on the undercard of a race like the Million you get an Appleby horse in o
ne of the races, you get Shug McGaughey, Graham Motion. That’s when you get more recognition; people start to see our races and go, ‘Colonial Downs, I need to pay attention to that.’”
“It’s competitive,” adds Hannum. “Saratoga have some big turf races today and I like to think we’ve drawn some horses from them. When you’ve got jockeys saying this is one of best turf courses you’ll find anywhere in racing, that’s what puts us on the map and that’s what we will continue to develop.”
Colonial Downs: rich past, promising future. And those beautiful forests …
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